Few trials have gripped the public’s imagination quite like the protracted legal battle between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, so much so that a documentary covering the subject is currently the single most-watched feature-length project available to Netflix subscribers around the world.
That – coupled with the massive worldwide interest generated during the war of attrition and litigation between the former spouses – has the ins and outs of the legal proceedings seared into the consciousness in a way that very few celebrity lawsuits have managed to accomplish. And yet, Alice Cooper isn’t buying it.
Obviously, he’s speaking from a position of bias as Depp’s close friend and bandmate in aging supergroup Hollywood Vampires, but he nonetheless opined to Vulture that he thinks the whole thing was turned into a bigger deal than it actually was.
“I don’t think it was ever mentioned on the tour because nobody cared. I never watched a moment of the trials. It was so blown out of proportion. It was such a Hollywood thing. I knew Johnny was gonna win because how many people have other exes literally on their side testifying for him? That never happens.
I turned it right off and said, ‘Well, you know, Johnny will weather this storm and when he’s onstage, he’s our guitar player.’ If you talk to Johnny about it, it was something that happened. He was just like, ‘Yeah, yeah, what’s the next song?’ For Johnny, it was one of those things where… you can’t say it got blown out of proportion, but I don’t know why they would televise the proceedings, right? It’s because of the fame of both people.”
It might not have caused much of a ripple among Depp’s inner circle, but as Netflix’s new doc is proving right at this very moment in time, the saga is clearly still capable of capturing the imagination.